Falling Water Video and Photos

Continuing my Frank Lloyd Wright theme is Falling Water, Arguably one of the greatest residences ever built.

Fallingwater, the summer residence of Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., was designed in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall in Bear Run at Rural Route 1 in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. Edgar Kaufmann Sr. was a successful Pittsburgh businessman and founder of Kaufmann’s Department Store.

Fallingwater is known as organic architecture, where the building blends in and is in harmony with the environment surrounding it. The house is actually built over a stream and waterfall, which can be heard throughout the house, but interestingly can’t be seen from anywhere in the house, except for the balcony on the top floor. This was obviously unintended since Wright himself couldn’t even explain why.

Although the house is obviously a masterpiece, it has had it’s share of structural problems. A 2002 repair scheme involved temporarily supporting the structure; careful, selective, removal of the floor; post-tensioning the cantilevers underneath the floor; then restoring the finished floor.

The senior Mr. Kaufmann called Fallingwater “a seven-bucket building” for its leaks, and nicknamed it “Rising Mildew.” The mildew problems coming from the house being built directly over a stream of course.